When the messenger-boy had made out the name, he opened this smaller door and entered the long, narrow store. Its sides and walls were covered with bins and racks containing sample steel rails and iron beams, and coils of wire of various sizes. Down at the end of the store were desks where several clerks and book-keepers were at work.

As the messenger drew near, a red-headed office-boy blocked the pa.s.sage, saying, somewhat aggressively, "Well?"

"Got a telegram for Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.," the messenger explained, pugnaciously thrusting himself forward.

"In there!" the office-boy returned, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards the extreme end of the building, an extension, roofed with gla.s.s and separated by a gla.s.s screen from the s.p.a.ce where the clerks were at work.

The messenger pushed open the glazed door of this private office, a bell jingled over his head, and the three occupants of the room looked up.

"Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.?" said the messenger, interrogatively, holding out the yellow envelope.

"Yes," responded Mr. Whittier, a tall, handsome old gentleman, taking the telegram. "You sign, Paul."

The youngest of the three, looking like his father, took the messenger's book, and, glancing at an old-fashioned clock which stood in the corner, he wrote the name of the firm and the hour of delivery.

He was watching the messenger go out. His attention was suddenly called to subjects of more importance by a sharp exclamation from his father.

"Well, well, well," said the elder Whittier with his eyes fixed on the telegram he had just read. "This is very strange--very strange indeed!"

"What's strange?" asked the third occupant of the office, Mr.

Wheatcroft, a short, stout, irascible-looking man with a shock of grizzly hair.

For all answer Mr. Whittier handed to Mr. Wheatcroft the thin slip of paper.

No sooner had the junior partner read the paper than he seemed angrier than was usual with him.

"Strange!" he cried. "I should think it was strange! confoundedly strange--and deuced unpleasant, too."

"May I see what it is that's so very strange?" asked Paul, picking up the despatch.

"Of course you may see it," growled Mr. Wheatcroft; "and let us see what you can make of it."

The young man read the message aloud: "Deal off. Can get quarter cent better terms. Carkendale."

Then he read it again to himself. At last he said, "I confess I don't see anything so very mysterious in that. We've lost a contract, I suppose; but that must have happened lots of times before, hasn't it?"

"It's happened twice before, this fall," returned Mr. Wheatcroft, fiercely, "after our bid had been practically accepted and just before the signing of the final contract!"

"Let me explain, Wheatcroft," interrupted the elder Whittier, gently.

"You must not expect my son to understand the ins and outs of this business as we do. Besides, he has only been in the office ten days."

"I don't expect him to understand," growled Wheatcroft. "How could he?

I don't understand it myself!"

"Close that door, Paul," said Mr. Whittier. "I don't want any of the clerks to know what we are talking about. Here are the facts in the case, and I think you will admit that they are certainly curious: Twice this fall, and now a third time, we have been the lowest bidders for important orders, and yet, just before our bid was formally accepted, somebody has cut under us by a fraction of a cent and got the job.

First we thought we were going to get the building of the Barataria Central's bridge over the Little Makintosh River, but in the end it was the Tuxedo Steel Company that got the contract. Then there was the order for the fifty thousand miles of wire for the Trans-continental Telegraph; we made an extraordinarily low estimate on that. We wanted the contract, and we threw off, not only our profit, but even allowances for office expenses; and yet five minutes before the last bid had to be in, the Tuxedo Company put in an offer only a hundred and twenty-five dollars less than ours. Now comes the telegram to-day. The Methuselah Life Insurance Company is going to put up a big building; we were asked to estimate on the steel framework. We wanted that work--times are hard and there is little doing, as you know, and we must get work for our men if we can. We meant to have this contract if we could. We offered to do it at what was really actual cost of manufacture--without profit, first of all, and then without any charge at all for office expenses, for interest on capital, for depreciation of plant. The vice-president of the Methuselah, the one who attends to all their real estate, is Mr. Carkendale. He told me yesterday that our bid was very low, and that we were certain to get the contract. And now he sends me this." Mr. Whittier picked up the telegram again.

"But if we were going to do it at actual cost of manufacture," said the young man, "and somebody else underbids us, isn't somebody else losing money on the job?"

"That's no sort of satisfaction to our men," retorted Mr. Wheatcroft, cooking himself before the fire. "Somebody else--confound him!--will be able to keep his men together and to give them the wages we want for our men. Do you think somebody else is the Tuxedo Company again?"

"What of it?" asked Mr. Whittier. "Surely you don't suppose----"

"Yes, I do," interrupted Mr. Wheatcroft, swiftly. "I do, indeed. I haven't been in this business thirty years for nothing. I know how hungry we get at all times for a big, fat contract; and I know we would any of us give a hundred dollars to the man who could tell us what our chief rival has bid. It would be the cheapest purchase of the year, too."

"Come, come, Wheatcroft," said the elder Whittier; "you know we've never done anything of that sort yet, and I think you and I are too old to be tempted now."

"Nothing of the sort," snorted the fiery little man; "I'm open to temptation this very moment. If I could know what the Tuxedo people are going to bid on the new steel rails of the Springfield and Athens, I'd give a thousand dollars."

"If I understand you, Mr. Wheatcroft," Paul Whittier asked, "you are suggesting that there has been something done that is not fair?"

"That's just what I mean," Mr. Wheatcroft declared, vehemently.

"Do you mean to say that the Tuxedo people have somehow been made acquainted with our bids?" asked the young man.

"That's what I'm thinking now," was the sharp answer. "I can't think of anything else. For two months we haven't been successful in getting a single one of the big contracts. We've had our share of the little things, of course, but they don't amount to much. The big things that we really wanted have slipped through our fingers. We've lost them by the skin of our teeth every time. That isn't accident, is it? Of course not! Then there's only one explanation--there's a leak in this office somewhere."

"You don't suspect any of the clerks, do you, Mr. Wheatcroft?" asked the elder Whittier, sadly.

"I don't suspect anybody in particular," returned the junior partner, brushing his hair up the wrong way; "and I suspect everybody in general. I haven't an idea who it is, but it's somebody! It must be somebody--and if it is somebody, I'll do my best to get that somebody into the clutches of the law."

"Who makes up the bids on these important contracts?" asked Paul.

"Wheatcroft and I," answered his father. "The specifications are forwarded to the works, and the engineers make their estimates of the actual cost of labor and material. These estimates are sent to us here, and we add whatever we think best for interest, and for expenses, for wear and tear, and for profit."

"Who writes the letters making the offer--the one with actual figures I mean?" the son continued.

"I do," the elder Whittier explained; "I have always done it."

"You don't dictate them to a typewriter?" Paul pursued.

"Certainly not," the father responded; "I write them with my own hand, and, what's more, I take the press-copy myself, and there is a special letter-book for such things. This letter-book is always kept in the safe in this office; in fact, I can say that this particular letter-book never leaves my hands except to go into that safe. And, as you know, n.o.body has access to that safe except Wheatcroft and me."

"And the Major," corrected the junior partner.

"No," Mr. Whittier explained, "Van Zandt has no need to go there now."

"But he used to," Mr. Wheatcroft persisted.

"He did once," the senior partner returned; "but when we bought those new safes outside there in the main office, there was no longer any need for the chief book-keeper to go to this smaller safe; and so, last month--it was while you were away, Wheatcroft--Van Zandt came in here one afternoon, and said that, as he never had occasion to go to this safe, he would rather not have the responsibility of knowing the combination. I told him we had perfect confidence in him."

"I should think so!" broke in the explosive Wheatcroft. "The Major has been with us for thirty years now. I'd suspect myself of petty larceny as soon as him."

"As I said," continued the elder Whittier; "I told him that we trusted him perfectly, of course. But he urged me, and to please him I changed the combination of this safe that afternoon. You will remember, Wheatcroft, that I gave you the new word the day you came back."

"Yes, I remember," said Mr. Wheatcroft. "But I don't see why the Major did not want to know how to open that safe. Perhaps he is beginning to feel his years now. He must be sixty, the Major; and I've been thinking for some time that he looks worn."

"I noticed the change in him," Paul remarked, "the first day I came into the office. He seemed ten years older than he was last winter."